“I said the victims went through worse but it wasn’t the same ,” he said. “You’d have to have Down syndrome to not feel sorry for . #MeToo is what you want for your daughters. You want that to be the future world, of course. And I meet all kinds of women with terrible stories of what’s happened to them. So, I wasn’t talking about the victims. They asked me about Roseanne.”

The Arc, an organization serving people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, criticized Macdonald for his comment and his “ignorance.”

“It is disheartening that yet again we need to remind a public figure to show respect for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities,” a statement from The Arc read. “What is particularly disturbing about Norm Macdonald’s comment is that in his attempt to explain away his insensitivity to the #MeToo movement, he chose to mock a group of people who have a much greater understanding of victimization than he does. Mr. Macdonald’s comment is doubly offensive and shows his ignorance about the disability community.”

Speaking with Stern, Macdonald did not apologize for his comments but he said he wished he never did the interview.

“I wish I never had to do an interview, especially a print interview because they edit it and put it together and ask you questions that maybe you don’t want to answer,” he said.

“I’m a f**king dumb guy, I get confused and s**t,” he added. “ asking me about a whole bunch of things at the same time.”

Macdonald, when speaking to Stern, said he put Barr in communication with C.K. because he felt the comic could give her more support having been through “this particular, very peculiar event where you say something or do something and your career is wiped out forever.”

Hours after his comments spread across the internet, generating criticism, Macdonald issued an apology on Twitter.

“Roseanne and Louis have both been very good friends of mine for many years. They both made terrible mistakes and I would never defend their actions,” he tweeted. “If my words sounded like I was minimizing the pain that their victims feel to this day, I am deeply sorry.”

Roseanne and Louis have both been very good friends of mine for many years. They both made terrible mistakes and I would never defend their actions. If my words sounded like I was minimizing the pain that their victims feel to this day, I am deeply sorry.

Macdonald’s comments about the MeToo movement and C.K. and Barr led to The Tonight Show cancelling his appearance.

In a statement, NBC said it cancelled Tuesday’s appearance “out of sensitivity to our audience.”

Macdonald addressed the cancellation on Stern’s show saying, “Jimmy comes to me … and he was like, ‘How should we play this?’ I said, ‘I think we should say it at the end because if you say it at the beginning, you can’t come back from that.'”

He continued: “And he said, ‘What am I supposed to ask?’ And I said, “Jimmy, I don’t exactly know.’ So he leaves. Then someone suggested I start the show with an apology, and I go, ‘It’s not my show.’ And Jimmy came back in and said, ‘Can I talk to you, buddy?’ He was very broken up about it. And he said, ‘I don’t know what to do. And I said, ‘Should I not do the show?’ And he said. ‘I don’t know. It’s just that I have so much pressure from so many people.'”

“He goes, ‘People are crying.’ And I say, ‘People are crying?!’ And he said, ‘Yeah. Senior producers are crying.’ And I said, ‘Good lord! Bring them in and let me talk to them. I don’t want to make people cry,'” Macdonald revealed. “So Jimmy said, ‘Come back whenever you want, but I think it will hurt the show tonight. And I said, ‘Jimmy, I don’t want to hurt your show. That is the last thing I want to do.'”

A Netflix spokeswoman said the streaming service has no comment on Macdonald’s remarks, but Macdonald told Stern he had talked to Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos about the interview and “he knows I’m a good guy.”

“ Ted Sarandos was the greatest,” he said. “He is one of the greatest people to ever come into my life. He knows I am a good person. Ted said, ‘We don’t want to hear legalese. Write your own thing.'”